Childhood
by atrfla
Summary: Alyssa is a normal girl- wait. Scratch that. Alyssa ISN'T normal. She has ADHD & ODD, and she's just moved to Berkeley. She's smart, athletic & everything one could want in a girl- yet Max wants the opposite: nothing to do with her. After the whole thing with Dylan- which happened only 3 weeks before- he's wary of every new girl who might steal his heart. Including Alyssa.


I tapped my fingers on the table like I always did. _New town, new school, new life. _I kind of liked it. It gave me a chance to _not _be the crazy one, especially since the school I was going to attend was made for the crazy ones.

"Alyssa," my aunt said, appearing in the doorway of my new, sparse room. "Are you settled?"

I looked around. "Yeah. I guess so."

"Stop that tapping," she ordered. "It's obnoxious."

I stopped talking but now quickly wove my fingers together and separated them, doing that again and again and again…

"I'm ADHD," was my protest when she told me to stop the distracting hand motions. "I can't help it."

"Go to bed," was her sigh of a response. "You have school tomorrow. You need your rest."

So I did, despite not feeling tired- _I can prove to Aunt Alex that I'm not a freak-_ and I woke up feeling refreshed the next morning. I tapped out rhythms on the walls as I went from my room to the bathroom to the kitchen, dressing in loose jeans and a big yellow t-shirt, brushing out my short brown hair and pulling it back into my typical high ponytail, and finally grabbing an Eggo waffle from the toaster.

I walked to school- Aunt Alex had shown me the way the day before after picking me up from the airport. I always walked to school. I was great on academics and all, but sports were my thing. I was ADHD, after all- hard-wired for the physical stuff.

At school, I met the pretty middle-aged blonde principal at the door. She introduced herself as Principal Kristina Braverman, and asked, "Are you Alyssa Baldwin?"

"Yes," I said.

"You're fourteen and have ADHD and mild ODD?"

"Yeah."

She raised her eyebrows. "Must be pretty mild, then. You don't seem ODD to me."  
>"I've been working on it."<p>

She smiled. "Come on in, then, Alyssa. I'll take you on a tour of the school and introduce you to some of your classmates."

The ODD part of me resisted this- _I don't want to take a tour,_ it said, _especially not at some adult's command-_ but I set my shoulders firmly back and blocked it from getting to me.

The school was… uh… pretty, to say the least. The classrooms and kitchen were very industrial, and the whole school was really open. There weren't many doors, to say the least. But the colors reminded me of my old preschool- the chairs were red and yellow and very little kid-y. At least there were couches.

The tour was almost done and we were heading toward my first class when Principal Braverman stopped. I followed her gaze and saw a boy with black hair standing by the window of one of the student study-hall-type rooms, his shoulders hunched like he was trying to avoid being seen. "Max," she called gently.

The boy turned around, and with a few long strides was standing only a few feet away. "What?"

"I'd like you to meet our new student," she told him. "This is Alyssa."

The boy- Max- glared at the principal with a hate I'd rarely seen, and I briefly wondered if he was ODD too. But then he spoke. "Last time you introduced me to a new student, I ended up a laughingstock. I thought I expressed my desires to meet no more new students clearly."

His eyes darted to the ceiling, floor, chairs, tables, and even past us, but he seemed no more eager to look at us than he did to speak to me.

"You did," said Principal Braverman, but she quickly added on, "It's been three weeks and you've barely talked to anyone. Maybe Alyssa would-"

"No. May I go to class?" he asked, for the bell had just rang.

The blonde woman next to me sighed. "Yes, bud. Go to class."

Max stepped around us and headed for the nearest exit. I craned my neck to watch him. "Wow. _He _was unfriendly."

"My son can't be entirely held responsible for his shortcomings," Principal Braverman said curtly. "Let's get you to your class."

I'm sure my face turned bright red as I realized my mistake. They looked nothing alike- she couldn't possibly have expected me to _know_ he was the principal's son.

I wasn't meek often, but I was meek as I followed her off to my class.


End file.
